The NFL’s willingness to cater to its free farm system includes potential antitrust violations and/or collusion.
The league’s media conglomerate has published a report suggesting that Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh won’t have a clear path back to pro football, if he decides to escape the NCAA by taking a job with an NFL team. Per the report posted on NFL.com, “The NFL is unlikely to make itself a safe harbor for Harbaugh to escape what could be substantial NCAA discipline, league sources say, raising the strong possibility Harbaugh would need to serve some or all of any possible suspension he could face in college if he returns to the pros.”
The report also says there’s no NFL bylaw governing the matter. Which obviously wouldn’t stop the NFL from doing whatever it wants. And if it wants to support the entity that governs college football, it will.
But the report does point to precedent, even if that precedent had no leg to stand on. In 2011, the Colts hired former Ohio State coach Jim Tressel to serve as the team’s replay consultant. The NCAA had suspended Tressel five games for lying to investigators about (God forbid) benefits players had received. And so the Colts (presumably at the nudging of the league) suspended Tressel for six games.
That was the same year the NFL had created a punishment out of thin air for former Ohio State quarterback Terrelle Pryor, who had broken not a single NFL rule but was suspended anyway, for allegedly manipulating eligibility rules.
The manipulation in this setting is done by the league. And it’s ultimately about keeping the folks who develop NFL talent at no cost to the NFL happy.
If the league were to suspend Harbaugh despite no rule supporting such a move, that would arguably be an antitrust violation and/or collusion. If one of the league’s teams wanted to hire Harbaugh and employ him as of Week 1, the NFL would have no basis for keeping that from happening.
The broader question, frankly, is whether the ongoing NCAA investigation regarding sign-stealing by Michigan will make Harbaugh radioactive to NFL owners. He tried each of the last two years to return; neither the Vikings nor the Broncos hired him. Does the current situation make him more attractive, or less attractive? As more comes out regarding a sign-stealing operation about which Harbaugh has claimed he knew nothing, will an NFL owner have an easier time or a harder time selling Harbaugh to fans and media?
Frankly, today’s report from the league’s reporting outlet might simply be aimed at breaking a tie. If a team that is thinking about hiring Harbaugh will already be wrestling with whether it’s the right move to make, knowing that the NFL might lower the boom on Harbaugh could be the thing that gets the NFL’s teams to treat him the same way they treated his former quarterback in San Francisco.
Then, the question would be whether Harbaugh would do anything about it in a court of law. The NFL, based on the fact that it’s already making its strategy known to the world, seems to believe he won’t.